Redlands 125th Anniversary: Town historian describes Redlands in the 1800s

REDLANDS - Tom Atchley, a retired teacher from Redlands High School, has come to be known as the town historian.

The Daily Facts interviewed him for our 125th anniversary of Redlands video series. He was so chock full of interesting facts about Redlands, and stories from the city's history, that the interview went almost three times longer than the others had taken.

This week's video is more than 45 minutes long.

This legacy for Atchley began during a college project, when he had to read early editions of the Citrograph, a newspaper in town a century ago. He indexed and organized the articles.

After the project, he kept going, folding the Redlands Daily Facts into his research and ending up with a full and illustrated documentation of Redlands and surrounding areas.

We filmed on one of the stone bridges at Sylvan Park that goes over the Zanja, which proper Redlanders pronounce "Sanky." Atchley has written a book on that irrigation ditch. He said people are right when they say it was built by an Indian tribe, but the rumor that they used shoulder blades from oxen for lack of tools is false. They used shovels, purchased right here in the Inland Empire.

He told us Sylvan Park was originally the Lugonia Heights Dump. Those rolling hills? Trash with lawn on top. In order to turn it into a park, the Redlands High School classes of 1910-15 were commissioned with planting trees, one per graduate, as a senior project. Each graduating class had about 20 students. The south side of Sylvan was designed as a campground for transients heading to the mountains.

Atchley said the whole town was called Lugonia for a time, named after the Lugo family, who were among the founders of this community.

He talked about Sarah Morey, for whom the Morey House was built, and her role in bringing the orange industry to Redlands. The Redlands district had 26 packinghouses. We were the naval orange capital of the world.

Because of a national tariff passed by then-Sen. William McKinley, the price of oranges was high and Redlanders became wealthy. When then-President McKinley visited Redlands in 1901, the streets were covered in rose petals.

In the five years it took for the orange trees to grow a harvestable crop, Redlands exported celery.

The 1913 freeze here, Atchley said, was worse than the Great Depression. We not only lost the orange crops, but snow birds opted not to winter here.

Atchley said there used to be three train tracks and stations in town. The surviving one, running through the Santa Fe Depot on Orange Street, was accompanied by the two that were taken out: the Dinky and the Southern Pacific.

He talked about how JDB Stillman was Leland Stanford's physician. In the 1880s he bought land and planted a vineyard and started a winery where the University of Redlands now stands.

And he talked about the fascination Redlanders have with our old houses. His presentation, originally including 80 houses and their history, has grown to 5,000 homes. Knob-and-tube wiring and Redlands rats have caused the loss of many of these Victorians, because of fire.